Risk

It was like he’d never seen food before.
I mean, I can understand hunger. For the first few months I had no clue how to feed myself; I raided a grocery store for something, anything, only when I was so ravenous that I was willing to face any of Them that I came across. But seldom was I that gutsy. I was soft then, unlike now.
The day I reached the mall I felt safe. And the day I used my fishing and hunting knowledge I knew I could survive. Yes, I still spent time hungry, but I’d learned to subdue it.
Van Helsing, however, apparently hadn’t eaten fresh food in ages. As soon as I handed him his paper plate of fish his eyes looked like baseballs, and his body practically melted at the first bite. I watched him with a raised eyebrow—it wasn’t that good. It was a fucking sunfish. It was hardly delicious. He seemed to disagree.
“When’s the last time you had a hot meal, Van Helsing?” I asked, serious.
“Honestly,” he said, swallowing, “I can’t remember. Before this hell started.” His eyes were lost. “Whatever it was I didn’t appreciate it. It was just another meal back then… I never took the time to appreciate it, because I thought I knew I would see the same thing the next day. And the day after.”
I nodded, sympathetic. I set my empty plate on the ground and walked from my chair to the bed. I stretched out next to Van Helsing.
“I used to be a pretty good cook,” I said proudly.
“Still are. I personally don’t believe this is a sunfish.”
“Shed your beliefs. It’s actually a couple sunfish, they haven’t got much meat on ‘em.” Van Helsing looked a little worried. “Chill,” I told him, “you need it. And there are plenty.” I don’t think this made him that much happier, but like anyone else his stomach did the last of his thinking for him.
“Anyway. I did most of the cooking for my family, just because,” I smiled. “By the time I was eight I could make a baked salmon to make all others weep.”
Van Helsing laughed. “Don’t be too humble, Risk.”
“Hey man, I knew I was good. You’d agree if you could taste it.”
“I would’ve loved to,” he sighed. “I used to love salmon.” He took another bite, a glint of disappointment in his eye that he didn’t taste what he wanted to. “Who taught you to cook?”
“No one. I figured it out on my own.”
“Bullshit.”
“Nope.”
“It wasn’t one of those mother-daughter things?”
I frowned. Now we got to this. “No. Not in my family.”
“Father-daughter?”
Stung again. “No.”
“Well, you were pretty smart to figure it on your own, then.”
I smiled. “I would’ve liked to think so.”
“Guess they cooked well down in… where ever it is you’re from.”
“Georgia,” I grinned. “Southern.”
“So that’s why the accent’s so thick.”
“That’d do it, yeah.”
“Georgia,” he pondered. “Wasn’t it, like, sweltering hot?”
“Not to me. But I was born and bred there so I wouldn’t notice.” I chuckled. “When it was really bad it was humid. You could drink the air.”
Van Helsing laughed. “And, what, did you eat oranges every day?”
“Hell yeah we did. They were good. So many that by the first day of school everyone in my class looked like an Oompa Loompa,” I teased.
He rolled his eyes. “Har har. Clever, really.”
“So where are you from?”
“Montana,” he said, taking another bite of fish. “It was beautiful. Always. I never saw a day of bad weather in my life.”
“I’ve seen the postcards,” I jested.
He shook his head. “No. They can’t compare.”His voice was very blissful now, and I worried that I’d lost my only friend to a memory. “The hills and the valleys were beautiful. Luscious greens only interrupted by boulders, which were their own collaboration of the smoothest grays and the richest browns.
“There was never a day that was ‘too hot’ or ‘too cold.’ Every day was exactly as it should be. Yes, you might sweat or shiver, but you never complained. It was never worth it. Fuck how uncomfortable you might be, everything around you was still beautiful, no matter what.
“But the sky was the best. During the day it would be the most perfect blue; light on the horizon, and darker as you reached the peak of the great dome. When there were clouds, each was a perfect white.
“The sunrise… it was miraculous. Shades of colors I can’t even describe, but it always seemed… sweet; like each color tasted of a perfect fruit. The sun was the ripest mango; around it was a halo of lemon; from there on the colors swirled from rich blueberry juice and plum to tantalizing strawberry.
“The sunset was always warm. You could have the worst day of your life and the sunset would comfort you. The sun tucked itself behind the hills and left streaks of violet and indigo, with pinks clouds dancing across it.
“And at night, the sky hugged the world beneath a blanket of the deepest, darkest blue, and thousands of silver specks littered it, to the point where it was sacrilege to try and count them.
“It was my home. And I miss it.”
I was absolutely mesmerized. I’d never met anyone who spoke like that. So passionately, so descriptive, so adoring.
So sad.
Van Helsing’s eyes shone as thick tears gathered at the bottom of his eyes. His face held so much pain and misery, and he suddenly looked centuries older. I’d been transfixed on his face, my mind trying to grasp the world he wove with his words. I noticed there was a tear running down my cheek.
He looked so hurt. It was all I could do to take his finished plate from his hands and set it on the ground before wrapping my arms delicately around his shoulders, pressing my cheek to his dirty hair and just holding him. It was the only way I could communicate that he was not alone. And to tell myself that I wasn’t either.

Being cooped up with Van Helsing was a bit irritating after a while. Normally I had a daily routine to keep my home running and myself occupied; ever since he showed up those things were often forgotten.
So as to avoid any guilt over Van Helsing’s potential loneliness, I woke up especially early the next morning. Once again I quietly unlocked our cave and crept out, making sure it was tightly shut behind me. After going about getting myself coffee I strolled around the mall with my gun on my back and my knife in my boot, ready for anything.
I did a comb over of the mall for security purposes. (I was taking special care to check the ceiling, an area I’d often overlooked until recently.) As I reached the top of the escalators I was happy to see a lack of broken glass and ruffian hunters splayed across the tile. Good. I’d had enough of that to last a lifetime.
I strolled through the mall, peeking in each of the store windows for any sign of disturbance. I’d done this check every day for two years, but something registered with me today.
A stuffed bear in the window of a toy shop.
First of all, I knew that bear. Not only because my eyes had glazed over him every day, but because, I realized, that exact same bear had belonged to my best friend.

We’d met when I was six. Dean was eight.
On my first day of elementary school, a boy gave me a hard time about the braided plaits of my hair. Sometimes the Georgia humidity made my hair frizz, and today was one of those days, stretching my hair elastics to their deaths. I sat quietly and ate my sandwich, trying to brush him off.
Here’s the part of the story you see coming.
Dean came over—my little hero—and told the teasing boy to leave me alone. Dean was ignored. He tried again, and the same thing happened. Finally, Dean grabbed the boy by the shoulder and turned him around, pulling his arm up and sending a right hook straight at the mean boy’s jaw.
Here’s the part of the story you didn’t see coming.
Dean missed by a mile. His own momentum sent him spinning around and slamming onto the blacktop of the playground. The teasing boy found this so hilarious that he forgot me and started on Dean. Even though Dean had failed completely, I appreciated him coming to my defense. I could only do the same.
So, with the boy’s back to me, I set my sandwich down in my Tupperware container, rose, smoothed my red-and-white-checkered skirt, and kicked the heel of my Mary Jane straight into his kidney.
He was down in an instant, moaning and groaning. If there were any teachers they didn’t seem to give a damn about him, so I didn’t either.
Dean was still down and I went over to him, concerned. He’d fallen hard on his left side and was sitting up slowly, clutching his shoulder and wincing.
“Are you okay?”
Dean nodded, slightly ashamed. “Yeah, I’m good.”
“Thank you,” I said shyly, “for trying. It was real nice of you.”
Dean sniffed. “My momma told me to make sure chivalry wasn’t dead.”
I was impressed by this brave older boy’s vocabulary. “What’s ‘chivalry’ ?”
“I ain’t got a clue,” he shrugged.
I helped him to his feet and he shook off the pain in his shoulder. He looked at the boy sniveling on the ground and whistled. “That’s a pretty mean kick you got there.” When he saw me blushing he smiled, a charming grin despite a few missing teeth. “I’m Dean. And I think your hair still looks good when it’s frizzy.”
From that day on we were best friends. Dean was kind of shy and didn’t have many friends before me, his companions usually consisting of the boy’s he played football with during recess but never hung out with outside of school. Other than that, Dean had two older brothers and one older sister, alongside his pet dog, Scrap. “Because he was tinier than all the other puppies and won’t eat nothin’ but table scraps,” Dean explained. Dean was also my first school friend and the only one decent enough to talk to me on my first day.
Dean and I did everything together. Yes, we played, but we also did homework together. Being older Dean would help me with my math problems and I would help Dean with his reading. Most of the time we just sat next to each other and did our studies. His mother used to think it was the cutest thing.
The day after Christmas Dean always came over so we could show each other our presents. Dean’s family wasn’t as well-off as Daddy and Hen and me, but every gift he got, no matter how meager, was gold to him. When Dean knocked on my door one chilled morning, I opened it to see him beaming and holding a soft, happy teddy bear in his arms, his joyful face shining in the glow of the decorative lights.
“Lily gave it to me!” Dean spoke proudly of his older sister’s gift to him.
It wasn’t a flashy kind of bear, not little decorations or sparkles or “Squeeze Me” buttons so it’s electronic voice could tell you it loved you. It was a simple, modest, cotton-stuffed teddy, with smooth mocha-colored fur on his body, his fuzzy snout and the pads of his paws sporting soft vanilla. The cotton anatomy clung to a holiday scent of cinnamon and firewood, a faint sprinkling of mistletoe berries beneath. His calm stitched smile shared facial space with two black button eyes and a nose of dark stitches. His head was capped with two thin ears, his neck sporting a red and green cloth bow. It was a very cute bear, really, soft with floppy arms and legs. But to me and my personal ache to mature it seemed… juvenile.
“Dean,” I said carefully as I watched him flop on my bedspread with the bear over his head, “you’re twelve now. Aren’t you a bit… old for teddy bears?”
Dean froze and sat up, looking at me in shock. “Frizz,” he said, using his nickname for me, “come sit next to me.”
I hopped up and stared at Dean expectantly; he set the bear down between us and held me firmly by the shoulders, looking right into me with his jade green eyes. “I love this present,” he said to me. “I love every present. You can see now that something’s not going right with the world. Strange things are happening. But this gift is something beautiful. It’s full of love. I don’t care that it’s a silly bear. That doesn’t matter to me. What matters is who gave it to me, and how happy Lily’s face was when I opened it. That’s all I wanted to see this Christmas. Lily… with a smile on her face.”
Then Dean fell onto me in tears—I was the only one who saw him cry—and I held him close as he wept.
Lily died that next September of a cancer she’d been fighting for two years. She was nineteen. Dean was crushed, still and silent as a statue at her funeral. The only movement he made was to grip my hand tighter when he thought he might fall apart. My hand was blue by the end of the day, but he needed me, so I didn’t care.
Dean was quieter than usual for months. Sometimes he would show up to our house in the middle of the afternoon asking just to be with me for a little while. He would lie down on the couch and I would read aloud from whatever book I’d had my nose in. Slowly, but surely, my friend came back to me.
When Dean went off to high school we didn’t see each other as often, but we were still close in our hearts. When I started my freshman year he always made a point to find me at lunch and introduce me to his friends. Always kind, always compassionate, Dean.
One night Dean had come over to study and left a textbook behind. I begged Daddy if I could just dash over and return it and be straight back within a half hour. Daddy was always nervous then, The Crisis having just started, but it wasn’t remotely near Georgia yet. Daddy finally freed me and I zoomed out.
When I knocked on Dean’s door his mother answered and sent me up to his room to return it. I opened the door to see Dean watching the screen of his small TV intently. The news, which I wasn’t allowed to watch. He didn’t even hear me come in.
I cleared my throat. “Dean?”
Dean jumped as if he’d just been shocked. He turned to see me standing in the doorway and exhaled slowly. “Jesus, Frizz, you about scared me to death.”
“Sorry. You left your book.”I walked into the room and set it on his desk. Out of the corner of my eye I saw flashes of the news—it was moving east from California, the government always trying and failing to find a way to stop it.
As a reporter read off a death toll, I asked, “Dean, why are you watching that? Just turn it off.”
“No,” he said firmly, “it’s important.”
“Well it won’t reach us, brainless, so why stir yourself up about it?”
Dean muted his TV and stood up quickly, coming right up to my face, and I was struck dumb with fear. Dean was big, a sturdy frame covered in chiseled muscle, his jaw now set tight on getting his point across. His normally soft features and light voice were now hard with determination. I knew he’d never hurt me, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t frightened.
“Do. Not. Say that,” he growled “Never ever kid yourself that way. None of that ‘it could never happen to me’ bullshit. It could always happen to you. And you better be damn well prepared if it’s headed your way.” He reached up and lightly cradled my face in his hands. He’d done this a thousand times before when he talked to me seriously, but this time it was different, more terrified and tender. “Be prepared to be careful. And now, everyone should be ready to run, and hide, and fight. To be strong.”
Dean’s arms fell to his side and he sat down on his bed, lost in thought. “Be ready to lose everything. We might.”
I saw him reach back behind his pillow—and there was Lily’s bear. I only saw that bear come out when Dean was really scared of something. That, honestly, was when it really hit me that the state of the world was not to be ignored.
I knelt by his feet. “Dean, do you think this is the end of the world?”
Dean stared at the bear’s button eyes and let that question sink in. “I don’t know,” he answered honestly. I was really sick of people not knowing. “But it might be.”
Dean’s eyes met mine and I could see he was afraid and trying to be strong about it. Just like with Lily.
“Stop being the tough guy, Dean,” I told him gently.
“I am the tough guy,” he chuckled awkwardly.
I shook my head. “I know you better than anyone else knows you. I know when you’re scared.”
At that moment we both realized how much we meant to each other. I felt it and I saw it on Dean’s face. When Dean set the bear down, I knew what was happening. Slowly Dean stood, his hands reaching my sides and helping me up as well. I came up to about his chin, having to stand on tiptoe to reach eye level.
And I kissed my best friend.
Because it was the end of the world, and that’s when you learn who you want to spend it with.

I never saw Dean again.
And now, staring at that bear in the shop window, sorrow hit me like knives to the chest. Of course I’d thought of him when I found myself on my own, but I never went to find him. All I did was run, like he told me to. Run and hide.
He breezed through my mind now and again, but this time his memory slammed into me. I missed him so much… it was so unfair. Of all the people in the world it seemed to me this plague just targeted the best and brightest in my life.
I stared at that bear behind the glass, and I prayed to anyone that was listening that Dean was still alive somewhere.
As I peered through the glass, I saw something that made me bolt back to Van Helsing so fast that my gun nearly flew off its strap.
Shop windows display pristine items. All the items in the windows were pristine last time I’d gone through.
Today one of the bear’s black button eyes was dangling by a string.